The Artificers are an alien race who gestate within asteroids hurtling through space. When the asteroids impact a planet the Artificers emerge and begin to dismantle the world by disrupting it with the dark matter within their Fulcrums. Parallax the Artificer has cratered on Newerth after destroying Andromeda's home planet of Ambia centuries ago, and the Hellbourne corruption oozing from the Scar senses an opportunity to coalesce with this dark matter and spread beyond Newerth.